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What’s fascinating to me about this system - as I discuss in the video above - is that it’s only really possible because of a long series of software enhancements that have been built into the iPad over the years, including: If you put your dock on the left or right edge of the screen, for example, it’s unclear if this whole setup will work. There are still some details to hash out, Apple tells me, and it isn’t available in the first developer preview.

That’s pretty much the long and the short of it. Of course, if you’re dragging files into the iPad, make sure you have an app open (like Files) that can accept it. However you set it up, you can drag and drop content between devices and it’ll use either Wi-Fi Direct or USB to transfer the files. If all this automatic setup sounds like a hassle, you can just go into system preferences and set a device as your preferred Universal Control buddy gadget. You go through the same process to set up a second device with Universal Control - it maxes out at three. Doing that is how you line up the iPad’s screen with your Mac’s, so that dragging the mouse between the screens doesn’t result in a weird jump.

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There are a couple of arrows inside it, a hint that you can slide that bump up or down before it breaks free into the iPad itself. Move it back to the Mac, and you control the Mac.īut there’s a clever little affordance built into that strange bar.

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When the mouse is on the iPad screen, both it and the keyboard on your Mac control the iPad. Keep dragging and pow, the bump breaks free into a circular mouse pointer. It’s a sort of indicator that the iPad is aware you’re trying to drag a mouse into it. One note is that if you have lots of compatible devices, Monterey assumes that you’re dragging towards the last iPad or Mac you interacted with.Īt this point, a Wi-Fi Direct connection is made and the iPad will show a small bar on the side with a little bump.

So there’s no UWB location detection, just good old assumption. When you do, the Mac will assume that you’re trying to drag the mouse over to another device, in this case the iPad. Then, you start up Universal Control by dragging your mouse pointer all the way to the left or right edge of your Mac’s screen, then a little bit beyond that edge. Of course, all the devices here need to be on the same iCloud account for this to work.

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When the devices are close enough, their Bluetooth modules let each other know. Universal Control is built off the same Continuity and Handoff features that have long been a part of iOS and macOS. That’s not a knock on Universal Control - sometimes the best software features are a result of clever thinking instead of brute force technological improvements.įirst, you need to get the iPad and Mac relatively close to each other. It’s essentially a new way to use a bunch of technologies Apple had already developed. It turns out that the entire system is actually simpler than it first appears. The segment happened so fast that it even seemed (incorrectly, as it turns out) like the Mac was able to physically locate the iPad in space so it knew where to put the mouse pointer.Īfter Zaprudering the clip and asking Apple a few questions, I now have a better understanding of what’s going on here. In a classic Apple move, there was no setup required at all. What made the demo so impressive is how easy and seamless it all seemed. The idea is simple enough: it allows you to use the keyboard and trackpad on a Mac to directly control an iPad, and even makes it simple to drag and drop content between those devices.

The best moment of this year’s WWDC keynote was a straightforward demo of a macOS feature, Universal Control.

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